Great Gatsby Chapter 1 (pages 1-21)

1. Great Gatsby Chapter 1 (pages 1-21)

2. In the first chapter of “The Great Gatsby,” we are first introduced to the narrator, Nick Carraway. He starts off by explaining how his father taught him never to “criticize any one” and to “remember that all the people in the world haven’t had the advantages” that he’d had. Nick has just moved to West Egg in Long Island. He lives in a crummy building in the middle of larger extravagant ones, including Gatsby’s. Nick briefly describes Gatsby’s personality as “gorgeous.” Nick then goes to East Egg, where his cousin, Daisy, and her husband have invited him, Tom to have dinner. After an extremely awkward dinner Nick goes home where he sees Gatsby again on the lawn. Gatsby then disappears and the chapter ends.

3.
a. Tom Buchanan

b. “The idea is if we don’t look out the white race will be-will be utterly submerged. It’s all scientific stuff; it’s been proved.”

c. Qualities:
-“He was a sturdy straw-haired man of thirty with a rather hard mouth and supercilious manner.
-He is a racist.
-He is thought to be cheating on his wife.
-He has inherited money and is rich because of this.
-He is a great athlete. He was one of the best football players in college.

d. Tom is Daisy’s husband. Daisy is Nick’s cousin. Tom went to Yale with Nick. While there, not many people liked him, because of his arrogant arrogant self-centered attitude. Nick sense that Tom wants him to like him. Tom owns a mansion in East Egg as a result of the money that his parents have. At this point the reader can’t be sure of Tom’s importance in the novel.

4. “I hope she’ll be a fool—that’s the best thing a girl can be in this world, a beautiful little fool.”
Daisy says this to Nick, when talking about her daughter. This is the social norm of society at the time. Daisy often tries to reach this on her own. She does not even confront Tom about the other woman that he is seeing. Daisy thinks that a girl is better off being a fool because she will have more fun in life and in this period of time women’s opinions don’t really matter.